The FBI has begun a new process for tracking threats issued against school board members and teachers in a move that has some Republican lawmakers accusing the agency of treating protesting parents like domestic terrorists.

On Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal reported that an internal email was leaked by an unnamed FBI agent to Republican lawmakers, allegedly out of concern that the new directive could lead the agency to collect information on parents who are protesting but not engaged in criminal activity.

In an email to bureau staff on Oct. 20, the assistant directors at the FBI's criminal and counterterrorism divisions issued a directive to flag all assessments and investigations into potentially criminal threats, harassment and intimidation of educators with a “threat tag. They said that this move was designed to facilitate analysis of potential threats.

A spokesperson for the FBI told the Journal that it has "never been in the business of investigating parents who speak out or policing speech at school board meetings" and reiterated its commitment to respecting Americans' free speech.

The directive follows a mounting number of violent threats aimed at local school boards across the country over issues like mask mandates or the teaching of critical race theory. Most of these threats have not resulted in arrests or prosecutions, owing to the First Amendment issues that compound law enforcement’s ability to investigate them and the difficulty in identifying perpetrators in the first place.

The National School Boards Association (NSBA) sent a letter to President Joe Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland on Sept. 29 that requested federal assistance in protecting school officials. On Oct. 4, the Department of Justice initiated a memorandum that instructed U.S. Attorney's Offices and federal agents to coordinate a response with state and local officials.

Republicans and conservative activists have seized on the letter and memo as evidence of a crackdown by the Biden administration on parents’ First Amendment rights. Though the NSBA did say in its letter that some of the threats members are receiving may constitute domestic terrorism, they did not apply that label to parents who were showing up to express their grievances.

FBI, DOJ and Homeland Security officials have separately testified to Republican members of Congress that they only conduct investigations into acts of violence or direct threats of it.

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